Ben Stilwill, this year’s Order of the Arrow National Vice Chief, has started his own blog.     Like Bill Mulrenin and myself, he also uses Word Press as his blogging software.     His blog can be found at:

http://www.benjaminstilwill.com/

He follows the lead of last year’s National Chief, Evan Chaffee, who maintained his own blog  during his year in office.

So far there is only one entry, written a few days ago, where we learn he has decided to pledge Beta Theta Pi at DePauw University.     I wonder how he’ll find balancing school work, pledging activities, and the demands of a national office in the Order of the Arrow.

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The United States Postal Service will be raising their rates, effective May 12, 2008.    

I have not yet closely examined the complete new rate structure but at first glance this appears to be a rather minimal increase.     The domestic  first ounce first class rate will rise a penny to $0.42.     The additional ounce rate will not change.    

The full details of this rate change can be found on the USPS website.

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Spam is getting completely out of hand.

I now get about 400-500 spam email messages daily. Nearly all get filtered right into my wastebasket and never looked at. I might never see an occasional non-spam email but there’s just too much spam for me to look through it all. Sorry, folks.
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  Earlier this month, Tipisa 326 held their first annual Native American Weekend, a lodge event specializing in training and education, instead of the regular lodge weekend program.   The patch made for the event was part of the 2007-08 theme of “Northwest Native American items”.   I had previously posted about this series here, but had not taken this extra weekend piece into account.

Rick Obermeyer showed the artwork for the rest of the set to me at the recent Sunshine Trade-O-Ree, and the year patch should be stunning.   That should be available in March.

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Ty Lawson  sat out his second game due to an ankle injury.   It was obvious the team was not the same without him.

Clemson had lost 52 consecutive games in Chapel Hill going into this match up.     A Carolina victory would be a record for the most consecutive  home victories against a single opponent.   But it did not start well for the Tar Heels.

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There are many abbreviations used in Blue Book and on this site that may not be readily apparent to collectors, especially those with less experience in this hobby.   Scott Dillard has written an excellent explanation of many of these abbreviations.   However many still do not know what these abbreviations mean.     I thought this would be a good time to explain three of the more obscure abbreviations used: LB, MTZ, and GER.

Once there were  three  major manufacturers of Order of the Arrow insignia.     While these three companies did not manufacture every OA item, they certainly were  dominant forces in this business.     They were responsible for many of the classic issues of our hobby.     Flaps produced by each of these companies had distinctive shapes.     In some cases more than one of these companies produced very similar emblems for the same lodge.     So, an important part of being able to identify some of these older items properly is knowing which company manufactured them.   The three companies were Lion Brothers  (LB), The Moritz Embroidery Works  (MTZ), and the Geer Company (GER).    

An explanation of each of thes three shapes follows.

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Last night was The Game.

Here in central North Carolina college basketball is very popular.     The rivalry between Duke University and UNC is longstanding and intense.   The teams play each other twice a year, once in Chapel Hill and once in Durham.     Currently dook is ranked number 2 nationally, and  Carolina is ranked number three.    Adding more intensity to this year’s rivalry is that some games in the first few rounds of the NCAA tournament will be played in Raleigh and Charlotte.   You can all have your  Super Bowl and the one Giant loss.     We have  the dook-UNC game.

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Here is another update on recent and forthcoming issues from Catawba lodge.

As is customary in recent years, Catawba will be issuing two patches for the delegates to this year’s Dixie Fellowship, the SR-5 Conclave.     Both items follow this year’s superhero them.

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In the latter part of last year I was made aware that Catawba lodge had planned a new set of Ordeal, Brotherhood and Vigil flaps.     Shortly after that the directive came down from the National Committee that lodges were not to make special flaps for the various honors.     I had assumed Catawba issued the flaps anyway, as they were in the works, and left space on my site to insert them once I had images.

Recently Larry Banks told me that due to this new directive the Ordeal and Vigil flaps were not produced.   Only the Brotherhood flap was made and issued.     I pressume the lodge had run out of stock of their former brotherhood flaps before the change in policy and needed the new flap.

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God bless the British for their cutting sense of humor!   A computer geek friend of mine acquainted me with this “series” of columns.   This one begins:

“What’re they for?” the PFY asks as the Boss rolls in a trolley load of brightly coloured plastic bins.“They’re for our recycling initiative,” the Boss responds. “Red for plastic, white for paper, yellow for cardboard and blue for polystyrene.”

“What about glass?” the PFY asks.

“Glass is to be sorted by colour into bins in the basement,” the Boss replies.

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